That is hardly ever the case, however. Almost always, “average salaries down” means that a number of high-seniority, high-paid veterans have retired and been replaced by lower-cost new or low-seniority teachers.

Teachers in Michigan public schools are paid strictly on the basis of seniority and number of college credits acquired. So when a teacher retires, an $85,000-a-year salary can be taken off the books and replaced with a starting salary of (in the case of Jenison) $37,583.

Overall, the state database shows that Jenison teachers did quite well in 2015-16, with raises that ranged from 3.9 percent to as high as 9.0 percent. The highest paid Jenison teachers made $84,892 last year, in a community whose median household income between 2011-2015 was reported to be $56,725 according to the U.S. Census.